They're always somehow reflecting back to us what we care about.

Any kind of American neuroses, any kind of American mythologies, the Kennedy family is

like woven into the American story for, you know, over 100 years.

Music American story for, you know, over 100 years. George Severus is the host of the comedy podcast Stradio Lab, as well as a new podcast called

The United States of Kennedy that explores our cultural fascination with the Kennedy

dynasty and the ways that this family has continued to shape American life for decades.

For this episode, George lays out the tale of the Kennedy curse through a handful of tragic

stories that have given Americans the impression

that this political powerhouse family might have an almost paranormal case of bad luck.

I'm your host, Chelsea Weber Smith, and this is American Hysteria.

I am so excited to welcome our guest this week.

Hello, George.

I can't wait to talk all things, Kennedy, with you.

Oh, my God.

I'm so excited.

And we're recording during, not to date ourselves, which I know we shouldn't do in a recorded podcast, but we're recording during the RFK Jr. interrogations that are happening, which have been all over my, all over my feed. And I will say, I don't know why I even brought it up because I haven't actually done a deep dive into everything that's being said yet. But every two minutes, I see a clip where he's looking, I'm sorry to say, incredibly unhealthy, talking about how every, how we need to all, you know, detox and make ourselves healthy. But hopefully we can talk about some more photogenic Kennedys today. Yeah, I hope so because every time I look at him, he looks more and more like he is melting toward the earth as if he is being pulled into hell. So it's good. We don't have to go there right now. I'm sure we'll have some poignant ending thoughts about him. Of course. But not, he's not who we're talking about today. No, no, no. So,

George, let's get started. Let's do it. All right. I think thinking about the Kennedys,

it's a big blind spot for me in American history. So this is actually going to be really valuable

to my overall understanding of pop politics, maybe, I'll say. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And I think I'm most

interested in this Kennedy curse that we hear about. And I know there are many deaths,

mysteries that surround this family. So I want to definitely get into that. But to start,

I would love if you told us why, why the Kennedys?

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